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The Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins will begin their quest for the 2013 Calder Cup starting this Saturday as the 5th seed in the Eastern Conference, battling the Binghamton Senators in a best-of-five series in the first round.

We're just three days away from Game One and I came across an interesting quote from Binghamton Senators defenseman Brett Lebda today in an article by WBNG Sports, breaking down the offense between the Penguins and Senators.

I expect most Penguins fans will have the end of Lebda's quote from the story stick. Here it is, copied directly from the article I linked above:

"Those are two key guys we'll key on but up and down their lineup
they're skilled and they've got some toughness and they match up well
with us but at the same time, we're not really worried about them a
lot," said Brett Lebda.

The two guys Lebda is referring to the BSens keying on are of course Chad Kolarik (31 regular season goals) and Derek Nesbitt (26 regular season goals).

But the end of that remark? Is Lebda, a 10-year pro with 397 games of NHL experience, trying to instill confidence in his team or give the Penguins bulletin board material? I'm sure he was shooting for the former, but I believe he probably did both.

Chalk it up as adding fuel to the fire of a rivalry that will surely show itself in this first round match up. After all, it is the Senators that are the Penguins closest (geographically) rival. They played each other 10 times this season, and while the overall season series had the Pens go 4-6 against the BSens, the Pens won the last three meetings.

In the coming days, I will breakdown the two teams heading into Saturday's game and offer up a prediction of my own inside of Saturday's Game One Preview.

Here's the full schedule of round one if you missed it earlier this week: